Community & Business
23 October, 2025
Border council get-together gets results
Meeting of Tenterfield & SDRC councils
Health was certainly a topic and possibly renewables were talking points at the latest Border Regional Organisation of Councils meeting held last week.
The regularly scheduled meeting and AGM slated SDRC Cr Sheryl Windle on the agenda to address renewable energy in the Southern Downs and Mayor Bronwyn Petrie to present on health in the Tenterfield Shire Council region.
SDRC officials, however, later told the Town & Country Journal that Cr Windle did not speak at the meeting.
Other concerns were raised as well including the planned expansion of National Parks in the area and the pulled funding for wild dog fencing. The inland rail project was updated and the NSW Reconstruction Authority presented on a recent Cross Border exercise which involved both the SDRC and Tenterfield Shire.
Mayor Petrie told the Town & Country Journal that meeting with colleagues on both sides of the border are extremely useful.
Ian Leavers, the Queensland border commissioner has taken an increasingly active role in BROC. Sources have informed the Town & Country Journal that the budget and staff of the NSW border commissioner, Kalina Koloff, have been significantly cut.
A spokesperson for the Premier’s department told the paper that the cross-border commissioner’s office moved into the Premier’s department this month “through machinery of government changes”. It now has five team members “following a period of right-sizing” after COVID.
“The team is appropriately resourced”, the spokesperson added. However, several questions sent to Ms Koloff over the past year from the Town & Country Journal have never resulted in any response whatsoever.
Mr Leavers, meanwhile, is expected to attend the November meeting of the Country Mayors of NSW meeting.
BROC allows mayors on both sides of the Queensland-NSW border to speak directly to each other about issues that concern their communities, including housing, education, crime, tourism, transport and water security.
Cr Rob Mackenzie from Goondiwindi Regional Council has been re-elected as chairperson of BROC, and Cr Peter Mailler from Moree Plains Shire has been re-elected as deputy chairperson.
